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Why Free Software Evangelist Richard Stallman is Haunted by Stalin's Dream (factordaily.com)
Richard Stallman recently visited Mandya, a small town about 60 miles from Bengaluru, India, to give a talk. On the sidelines, Indian news outlet FactorDaily caught up with Stallman for an interview. In the wide-ranging interview, Stallman talked about companies that spy on users, popular Android apps, media streaming and transportation apps, smart devices, DRM, software backdoors, subscription software, and Apple and censorship. An excerpt from the interview: If you are carrying a mobile phone, it is always tracking your movements and it could have been modified to listen to the conversations around you. I call this product Stalin's dream. What would Stalin have wanted to hand out to every inhabitant of the former Soviet Union? Something to track that person's movements and listen to the person's conservations. Fortunately, Stalin could not do it because the technology didn't exist. Unfortunately for us, now it does exist and most people have been pressured or lured into carrying around such a Stalin's dream device, but not me.
I am suspicious of new digital technology. I expect it to have new malicious functionalities. It has happened so many times that I have learned to expect this, so I have always checked before I start using some new digital technology. I asked to find out what is nasty about it and I found out these two things. It was something like 20 years ago, and I decided it was my duty as a citizen to refuse, regardless of whatever convenience it might offer me. To surrender my freedom in this way was failing to defend a free society. This is why I do not have a portable phone. I refuse to carry a portable phone. I never have one and unless things change, I never will. I do use portable phones, lots of different ones. If I needed to call someone right now, I would ask one of you, "Could you please make a call for me?" If I am on a bus and it is late and I need to tell somebody that I am going to arrive late, there is always some other passenger in the bus who will make a call for me or send a text for me. Practically speaking, it is not that hard.
I am suspicious of new digital technology. I expect it to have new malicious functionalities. It has happened so many times that I have learned to expect this, so I have always checked before I start using some new digital technology. I asked to find out what is nasty about it and I found out these two things. It was something like 20 years ago, and I decided it was my duty as a citizen to refuse, regardless of whatever convenience it might offer me. To surrender my freedom in this way was failing to defend a free society. This is why I do not have a portable phone. I refuse to carry a portable phone. I never have one and unless things change, I never will. I do use portable phones, lots of different ones. If I needed to call someone right now, I would ask one of you, "Could you please make a call for me?" If I am on a bus and it is late and I need to tell somebody that I am going to arrive late, there is always some other passenger in the bus who will make a call for me or send a text for me. Practically speaking, it is not that hard.
Libertarians are the classical liberals. American 'liberals' are socialist authoritarians.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
There is not a single hardcore Libertarian running any SV company that matters. None. For all of their problems, I have never met or heard of a libertarian whose reaction to the PC orthodoxy of SV is less than extreme disgust. If the head of Google were a hardcore libertarian, he'd have made the rubble bounce on the people who went after James Damore and those that followed up with demands for a witch hunt because that mentality is anathema to everything they value.
Not to ignore all the things they did which made them such, they also identified as such. So who are you to tell them they're not?
Please be sure to elaborate on the standards used to reject this self-identification, because those standards will be checked for consistency with other choices of self-identification and when that can be rejected or not.
Liberal means 'pro liberty', more or less, the opposite of (leftist/marxist/socialist/progressive/American 'liberal').
Liberal means holding a broad worldview and being open to new ideas. It's not about liberty, per se. And that means having your eyes wide open and caring about the freedoms and rights of people other than yourself and not just your own interests.
A classic liberal would have laughed at safe spaces and abhorred PC speech codes. What is called a liberal, or a progressive if you want to be more trendy, in the US currently though thinks both are great improvements and enforces them.